Kevin Whately: I don't like detective dramas - Telegraph TV and Radio Kevin Whately: I don't like detective dramas Kevin Whately, who plays the title role in the hit ITV detective series Lewis, has admitted that he does not like crime dramas. Kevin Whately as DI Robert Lewis Photo: ITV Follow For most television viewers, Kevin Whately is synonymous with crime dramas, having played the dependable Oxford detective Lewis on our screens for more than 25 years. But the popular actor has admitted that he has never liked police shows and revealed that he would not even watch his own programme if he were not in it. The current series of Lewis on ITV1 will be the last after Whately voiced concerns that he was getting too old to play a police officer and expressed a yearning to swap the “factory” of television productions for the challenges of live theatre. Whately, 61, first appeared as Detective Sergeant Robbie Lewis in 1987 as the sidekick to John Thaw in Inspector Morse. That series ended after Thaw’s death in 2002, but ITV revived the characters in 2006 to create Lewis, which is now on its seventh series.

Related Articles Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox on the new series of Lewis 23 Apr 2010 Yet despite devoting so much of his acting career to performing in crime mysteries, Newcastle-born Whately confesses he is not a fan of the genre. "I never have liked detective dramas. I try to watch all of them to see what's going on, but I don't like them. I'd almost certainly not watch Lewis if I wasn't in it,” he told the Sunday Mirror. "I have no idea why it's still so popular. I think we are very lucky in a lot of ways. The city of Oxford is very attractive and the chemistry seems to work between the cast. It's one of those intangible things but I'm absolutely gobsmacked. It's ludicrous." He and fellow actor Laurence Fox, 34, who plays Lewis’s cerebral deputy Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, decided together that they wanted a break from the series.

Whately said: "As an actor you do try and keep it fresh, but there are only so many variations and it can start to feel like a factory." The characters will not be killed off at the end of the present series of Lewis, and Whately has not ruled out appearing in one-off episodes in the future. He said: "I'd be quite happy to come back in two years, although I wouldn't if Laurence didn't." Whately was a folk singer before he made his name as an actor in the 1980s BBC comedy drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He has also appeared in Coronation Street and Peak Practice, and has two grown-up children with his wife Madelaine Newton, the actress. Speaking last year, he said he was getting tired of all the compromises involved in making television programmes and wanted to do more stage acting. “I thrive on the insecurity and enjoy one-night stands, where every hall is a different place to play, a different size of venue, and you’re flexing acting muscles, which you don’t do in this kind of situation,” he said. “The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory.

Everybody is trying to do their best work, but it’s always a compromise.” Kevin Whately - TV Celebrities - ShareTV BIOGRAPHY: Kevin Whately (born 6 February 1951) is an English actor. Whately is known for his starring role as Neville Hope in the British television comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, his role as Dr Jack Kerruish in the drama series Peak Practice, and as Robert "Robbie" Lewis in the crime dramas Inspector Morse and Lewis. Whately is from Humshaugh, near Hexham, Northumberland.[2] His mother, Mary (née Pickering-, was a teacher and his father, Richard, was a Commander in the Royal Navy.His maternal grandmother, Doris Phillips,was a professional concert singer and his great-great-grandfather, Richard Whately, was Anglican Archbishop of Dublin.

The BBC documentary Who Do You Think You Are?, broadcast on 2 March 2009, also revealed that Whately is a descendant, on his paternal side, of Thomas Whately of Nonsuch Park, a leading London merchant, English politician and writer who became a director of the Bank of England, and of Major Robert Thompson, a pioneer tobacco plantation owner in Virginia who was a staunch supporter of the Parliamentarian cause at the time of the English Commonwealth. Whately was educated at Barnard Castle School,and studied drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His brother, Frank, is a drama lecturer at a London university. Before going professional, Kevin was an amateur actor at the People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne during the 1970s Career Before turning to professional acting Whately began his working life as a folk singer, and still plays guitar, performing for charity concerts:Along with other Auf Wiedersehen, Pet stars, he makes an appearance at the biennial benefit concert Sunday for Sammy in Newcastle. Before becoming an actor, he started training as an accountant.

His acting career includes several stage plays, among them an adaptation of Twelve Angry Men and film appearances in The Return of the Soldier, The English Patient, Paranoid and Purely Belter. Whately's television appearances include episodes of Shoestring, Angels, Juliet Bravo, Strangers, Coronation Street, Shackleton, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Marple, Inspector Morse, Alas Smith and Jones, Look and Read, You Must Be The Husband, B&B, Peak Practice, Skallagrigg, The Broker's Man, Murder in Mind, 2003 Comic Relief Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Lewis, New Tricks, Who Gets the Dog?, The Children and Silent Cry (film). Whately provided one of the voices for the English language version of the 1999 claymation Children's television series Hilltop Hospital. He has also appeared in an advert for Water Aid doing a voice over. Perhaps his most memorable television appearances were as Detective Sergeant Lewis, the down-to-earth complement to the snobbishly intellectual Inspector Morse. He reprised the role in the spin-off series Lewis, in which Lewis returns to Oxford as full Inspector.

With his new partner, the Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), Inspector Lewis solves murder mysteries while trying to rebuild his life after his wife's sudden passing, and gain recognition from his sceptical new boss. Richard Marson's book celebrating fifty years of Blue Peter comments that Whately auditioned as a presenter for the show in 1980 but lost out to Peter Duncan. Personal life Whately lives close to Milton Keynes, with his wife actress Madelaine Newton, who starred in 1970s BBC drama When the Boat Comes In. The couple have two children: Catherine "Kitty" Whately, born in 1983, who appeared as Kevin's on-screen daughter in the series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet for the first two seasons; and Kieran, born in 1985. Whately enjoys music; he listens to Pink Floyd and Dire Straits.

He supports Newcastle United Football Club on the football field and as a cricketer admitted to Inspector Morse writer Colin Dexter that he would like to have played cricket professionally for England, Dexter devised the storyline for "Inspector Morse: Deceived by Flight (#3.3)" (1989) in which Sergeant Lewis had to go undercover in a cricket team to investigate drug smuggling.Whately has recently come out in support for the Labour Party campaigning with Ken Livingstone in the London Mayor elections TRIVIA: His brother, Frank, is a Drama lecturer at a London university. Children, with 'Madelaine Newton' (qv): 'Catherine Whately' (qv) ("Kitty"), born in 1983 and Kieran, born in 1985. Whately appeared as Kevin's on-screen daughter in the series _"Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" (1983)_ (qv) for the first two seasons. Before becoming an actor he trained as an accountant. Studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He plays guitar and listens to 'Pink Floyd' (qv) and 'Dire Straits' (qv).

He told 'Colin Dexter' (qv) that he would like to have played cricket professionally for England if he had not become an actor, so Dexter devised the storyline for _"Inspector Morse" (1987) {Deceived by Flight (#3.3)}_ (qv) in which Sergeant Lewis has to go undercover in a cricket team to investigate drug smuggling. Despite training as an actor in London, Kevin retained his strong Newcastle accent, which was still unusual for an actor at that time. Related sites for this celeb Meet ‘Inspector Lewis’: Kevin Whately on ‘Morse,’ John Thaw, and the End of the Series - The Daily Beast Courtesy of Robert Day/ITV Studios for Masterpiece Inspector Lewis Meet ‘Inspector Lewis’: Kevin Whately on ‘Morse,’ John Thaw, and the End of the Series Kevin Whately has been playing gruff, sensible detective Robbie Lewis on ‘Morse’ and ‘Lewis’ for 26 years. Jace Lacob speaks to him about the possible end of the Oxford copper. 06.14.13 8:45 AM ET Inspector Lewis is due for a vacation.

After more than 20 years playing Detective Inspector Robert “Robbie” Lewis, actor Kevin Whately has earned a well-deserved break from investigating murders beneath the Oxford spires. Introduced in Inspector Morse’s first episode (“The Dead of Jericho”), Whately’s Robbie Lewis was the Geordie sidekick of the late John Thaw’s erudite and perpetually cranky Inspector Morse before becoming the lead of his own spinoff, Lewis. While Whately has a slew of roles on his résumé—he also starred in British drama Peak Practice and comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, as well as countless other projects, including The English Patient—Robbie Lewis is the role still most closely associated with the 62-year-old actor. He has played the gruff detective from 1987 to 2000 on Morse and from 2006 to the present on Inspector Lewis .

The much loved show returns for its sixth (or seventh, if you’re going by the ITV ordering ), and possibly final, season on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday, a season that finds Lewis and his partner, Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway ( Laurence Fox ), grappling with change, uncertainty, and possibly even a happy ending of sorts. The Daily Beast caught up with Whately earlier this month during his protracted hiatus from Inspector Lewis to discuss the challenges of playing a role for more than two decades, the romance between Robbie Lewis and medical examiner Laura Hobson (Clare Holman), why he tried to turn down Lewis, and what’s next for the Oxford sleuth. You've been extremely outspoken about your need for a potential hiatus from the series. What are the challenges of playing Robbie Lewis for 26 years? Kevin Whately: Every now and then, you suddenly realize you've asked the same question probably 50 times before: “Where were you last night?” We have wonderful writers, but you can't think of a different way to do it, or a different corner to come out of, and you do need a break.

I've just recently worked out that I haven't had a summer off for 31 years, which is half my life. So I want a year off for real. And it happened to coincide with Laurence [Fox] saying he wanted to come over and do pilot season over here, but he's actually doing a lot of fathering instead. Why do you think the popularity of the Oxford trinity—Lewis, Morse, and now prequel Endeavour—continues to endure? Whately: I think it's mostly to do with Oxford. Oxford has a slightly mythical rep, particularly for people who haven't been there. I think it’s a bit like Harvard or Yale over here: that they're seats of great learning and you imagine that there are these genius people that could work out absolutely wonderful murder plots that they could get away with. But it's so photogenic that I think that that plays a much bigger part in it probably than any of the actors. To a certain extent, once a show, or the characters, have been running for this length of time, it's a bit like The Mousetrap, people are so comfortable with it, perhaps, that they just enjoy the familiarity of it.

The chalk-and-cheese partnership is fairly common on TV these days. What makes Lewis and Hathaway’s dynamic so unique? Is it the juxtaposition of Geordie straightforwardness with lofty intellectualism? Whately: I suspect it's that. It's very similar to the Morse/Lewis relationship: [Hathaway’s] got a quite exceptional brain, where Lewis is the plodding man of the world and knows his way around. There is definitely a bit of father/son dynamic involved with it. But I think that sort of chemistry is always intangible. You can have actors that get on absolutely great and the chemistry doesn't work on screen and vice-versa. Laurence and I are very lucky in that we get on well and the chemistry seems to work. But, if I knew why, I'd be a zillionaire! One of the most surprising threads from the last seven seasons was the Robbie/Laura romance. Were you resistant to having the two get together, or was it the right time for Lewis to finally stop being the lonely widower? I was totally resistant to it because I always thought that the minute that happened, it was likely to become soapy!

It was something the executive producers said a long time ago: “Oh, they must get together in the end.” But we left it until this year, [and] I think it works quite well the way Lucy Gannon's written it. I was pleased with it. Is it true that you nearly turned down Lewis? Whately: I did several times. Eventually, they sent Ted Childs, the old executive producer [of Morse], and Chris Burt, who had produced the last few Morse films, along for lunch. And they both said, “Look, ITV aren't going to leave you alone. You might as well try one.” I didn't think it was a very good idea, to be honest. Of course, once we did one and it took off, we were back on the moving train, and I've been very grateful for it. I've enjoyed it a lot. But, yeah, I was hugely resistant to it. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily DigestStart and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat SheetA speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).

By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason What were your initial reservations? I just thought that my character wasn't a sharp enough character to lead a series. He’s quite a downbeat character and he was invented more as a sounding board for an extraordinary character, the Morse one, as Morse's Dr. Watson, really. And I was a bit worried that it would be laughed out of court. But I do like the character. I do respect his morals. Did you ever anticipate that Lewis would run as long as it has? Not at all. As I say, it feels like a moving train, because we kept a lot of the crew from Morse and our crew has stayed almost the same throughout the seven or eight years we've been doing it. You feel a responsibility for all of them, as well as to ITV, who are selling it round the world and viewers everywhere, to keep going. How much has Robbie changed since you first started playing him in 1987?

Another thing that I found difficult, starting with Lewis, was that he had always been a fairly happy-go-lucky, down to earth character and they wanted to turn him into more of a curmudgeon like Morse, I suppose, and I thought that was slightly forced onto me. I'm not that at ease playing a grump. But I did enjoy the last couple [episodes] where Robbie was more fun-loving and getting back into real life. VIDEO EMBED: It appears as though Robbie will leave the police force at the end of the season. Can a copper like Robbie Lewis ever truly retire? I don't know, but it's difficult. There was a very popular series [in the U.K.] with a 70-year-old actor playing a cop, and I don't want to be still playing [Robbie] when I'm 70, because you have to retire at 60 and everybody knows that. So, at some point soon, he's got to stop. To be in the regular police force at 70 isn't really on. Is this the end then, or do you think you could possibly come back to the character in 2014?

I think we might, as we did with Morse, do the odd one or two [specials], but I don't want to go on spending six months each year filming it, and I don't think Laurence does either. I think Laurence wants to do different things, and I remember exactly how I felt at his age with Morse and I think it's probably healthy if we do some, as ITV wants them, but not keep hammering them out. It is quite difficult to get 90-minute stories together each year, four of them, and to find writers with the ideas. Possibly, two would be a lot easier. Looking back at the last 26 years, what is your fondest memory of working with John Thaw on Morse? Mostly just sitting with John . We always shared a caravan from the word go, because that's what John had done in his previous series, The Sweeney, with Dennis Waterman. John was quite a shy man, and I was very shy myself at the time. So it took us two years to become pals. But he was the best company, John. He was a great storyteller and I learnt everything from him, about screen acting and technique; he was a wonderful actor.

He had the most fantastic voice, which was another reason why I didn't really want to spin Lewis off. My voice isn't half the voice that John Thaw's was, and it was a really important part of his makeup. He could do extraordinary things with it. With Lewis and Hathaway, you stepped into the role of sort of the wise elder, a reversal of the Morse/Lewis dynamic. How is your partnership with Laurence different than with John? Laurence isn't nearly as respectful of me as I was of John. In fact, quite the opposite! He's a completely different character. He's a live wire, Laurence: very, very intelligent and he can keep a whole unit bubbling along. He's very good at keeping a running gag going, a different one with every single member of the crew. He keeps everything sparky, which is very useful. But, yeah, he has no respect for me whatever. What are you doing this summer, now that you finally have some time off? Mostly whacking golf balls into bushes. I'm the captain of the Variety Club over in England, and so I'm playing golf for them once a week but doing odd bits.

I've done a stage show up in Newcastle and the odd day of filming, dramatized documentaries. But I'm not doing any drama filming at all. I'm not going to. If this does end up marking the end of Lewis, what do you hope that fans take away from this character's journey these past 26 years? People talk about it to me a lot. You suddenly realize that you have been a part of their lives for 26 years in the corner of their sitting rooms and it's quite touching how much it means to people, how much they've enjoyed your work. You're very aware in the theater by the response you get, but not so much on television, obviously. People are very appreciative, and I'm always thrilled at how long the Morse films have lasted. They seem to have an afterlife that goes on and on for decades, which is touching.

READ THIS LIST Taking the Lead: Interview with Inspector Lewis' Kevin Whately | TMR Taking the Lead: Interview with Inspector Lewis' Kevin Whately June 18, 2013 Robert Day/ITV Studios for MASTERPIECE Kevin Whately as DI Robert "Robbie" Lewis It was back in January 1987 that TV audiences were introduced to Detective Sergeant Robert “Robbie” Lewis, one half of the Oxford-based crime-fighting team in the long-running UK TV detective drama Inspector Morse. In his first case, "The Dead of Jericho," Lewis and his boss, the often irascible but always fair and dedicated Detective Inspector (later Chief Inspector) Morse, investigated the apparent suicide of a friend of Morse’s. Despite being as different as chalk is from cheese, both detectives developed a quirky friendship of sorts over time and an intense loyalty for one another that lasted up to Morse’s tragic onscreen demise in the 2000 episode "The Remorseful Day," where his dying words were “Thank Lewis for me.” With nearly three dozen cases under his belt, DS Lewis eventually struck out on his own almost 20 years later in the self-titled Morse spin-off Inspector Lewis.

Newly-widowed and promoted to the rank of detective inspector, he carried on investigating complex murder cases in and around Oxford with the help of DS James Hathaway. What were some of the initial challenges that actor Kevin Whately, who plays Lewis, faced when stepping into the lead role on his own series? “Fortunately, most of the crew on Lewis had worked on Morse, so from a productions standpoint it wasn’t that different,” says Whately. “I think the main thing for me was that in Morse I could be quite indulgent and laid back, but when you’re the central character in a story you have to drive that story. I was always very aware that that’s what John Thaw [Morse] did, particularly vocally. John had an absolutely fantastic cutting voice, which I’ve never had, and that always worried me. So for me with Lewis, it was largely an issue of energy as well as pace. “Something I found much more challenging was the fact that in Morse, my character had been quite down-to-Earth, happy-go-lucky, and easygoing.

With Lewis, I think they [the producers] wanted him to be a bit more like Morse, more of a curmudgeon and a grumpy old guy. That was sometimes tricky for me to match with my memories of Lewis.” In the Inspector Lewis pilot episode "Reputation," DI Lewis returns to Oxford after a lengthy absence and, much to his chagrin, his boss, DCS Jean Innocent (Rebecca Front), assigns him to investigate the murder of an Oxford mathematician student who was shot to death while taking part in a sleep study. Suspicion soon falls on one of the deceased’s fellow classmates, but when two more people are killed, Lewis must attempt to decipher a cryptic clue that his former boss, Morse, left in an old file. “The pilot was rather odd in that you were very much aware that John Thaw wasn’t there, but the script had references to his character of Morse,” recalls Whately. “Again, because many of the crew had worked on Morse, there was a great deal of sentimental talk and reminiscing going on, and in a strange way that kind of worked against what we were trying to do, which was create something new and different.

“Also, because Lewis had come back from abroad, I spent part of the story wearing these lurid tropical shirts and suntan make-up,” says the actor with a chuckle. “So it felt slightly surreal to me, and yet I was playing the same character and bumping into other familiar characters like Dr. Hobson [Clare Holman], who had been around in Morse.” Along with taking charge of a new murder inquiry, Lewis also had to deal with a new partner, DS James Hathaway (Laurence Fox) and all the responsibilities that that entailed. “As John Thaw and I did on Morse, Laurence Fox and I never really talked about our characters’ relationship or tried to analyze it too much,” says Whatley. “Chemistry is something that either works or it doesn’t. You can’t force it. Laurence and I went out for a few drinks early on before we starting filming, and then continued to do so when production began. “The two of us just tried to get on as pals, hoping some chemistry came out of that, and we were lucky that it did. There are some people who are best pals but whose chemistry doesn’t translate to film.

Much of the Lewis and Hathaway relationship, though, came largely in the writing, so Laurence and I didn’t have to work too hard at it. Things have seemed to work for eight years, so we must have gotten it right.” The Lewis pilot proved a hit with viewers, so much so that the ITV Network commissioned a three-episode first season for the following year. Even with all his time on the force, it was hardly smooth sailing for our hero, especially when it came to upper management. Meanwhile, behind the cameras, it was pretty much business as usual for Whately. “My character was up against—as all TV detectives seem to be up against—a superintendent who wasn’t terribly sympathetic to him and, in fact, was trying to get rid of him. That was Lewis’ main struggle,” explains the actor. “Also, at the same time he was nurturing the Hathaway character, I was trying to get Laurence used to working the way we did, because as I said, it was very much a set with a lot of the same crew and production people from Morse.

“A big part of being a regular on a series like this is making actors who come into it feel comfortable, whether they’re leads and ongoing like Laurence, or someone who’s in for just two days and has to dish out a tremendous amount of very erudite dialogue without any rehearsal. It’s an important responsibility as a lead actor to make everyone feel relaxed and at home as possible, so I was doing quite a bit of that with Laurence as well as the guest artists.” In addition to Whately’s character, another familiar face to make the leap from Morse to Inspector Lewis is the aforementioned police pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson. While some viewers may have hoped for a bit of romance to develop between the two, that does not appear to be in the cards for either of them. “Goodness knows, Lewis is a lot older than Hobson, but Morse was much older and there was a slight sort of flirtation between them,” notes Whately. “She and Lewis are both kind of lonely characters and it’s rather astonishing that they never got together earlier if they were ever going to. To be honest, though, that’s something I’ve always sort of resisted because I think it can then become somewhat soapy.

I prefer to focus on the mysteries and the dastardly characters as opposed to the home life of the lead character.” In the States, Inspector Lewis returned to the PBS line-up June 16th as part of MASTERPIECE Mystery! In "Down Among the Fearful," the first of three new episodes, Inspector Lewis and DS Hathaway investigate the murder of a psychic who had been leading a secret double life. “This episode is the one with all the chase scenes through the covered market,” says Whately. “We did three days of running around, and I’m not as young as I used to be. Luckily I survived all the interior market stuff, but then we went down to Merton and filmed me running towards Christ Church meadow. On the penultimate take, this girl is fatally injected with a drug and falls to the ground. Lewis has to chase after whoever did it, and as I did, I felt one of my hamstrings go. “We ended up needing another shot of Lewis getting to the gate and realizing that he wasn’t going to catch the killer, but I couldn’t do it because of my hamstring.

We had to wait a fortnight until we were in the middle of filming the following episode and back up in Oxford, by which time I thought the hamstring had healed, but inevitably it twanged again. “So in-between all this I was doing lots of other scenes and trying to hide this pathetic limp. In the last episode we shot, there’s a scene where Lewis has to run along to one of the canal boats on fire. The director, Dan Reed, said to me, ‘Can you do it once more,’ and on the very last take as I get level with the camera, you can see my face contort as my hamstring goes yet again.” In "The Ramblin’ Boy," Hathaway is off on sabbatical in Kosovo, so Lewis is assigned a temporary new partner, the young but bright DC Alex Gray (Babou Ceesay), and the two investigate the discovery of an elderly man’s body that has already been embalmed. This episode guest-stars former Doctor Who Peter Davison as Peter Faulkner.

“Peter Davison was at the Central School of Speech & Drama [at London University] a couple of years ahead of me, and I was sort of the Peter Davison of my year, if you see what I mean,” says Whately. “Here’s an actor who’s led so many series, and oftentimes when you’re leading your own series you don’t get to work with someone like that. It’s fascinating seeing how they work, and Peter tends to play sympathetic roles, as I do, so watching him create an evil character was fab as well. I really enjoyed shooting those scenes with him. Peter’s character is sort of a foe from the past, although he’s never appeared on the show before, and Lewis is desperate to nail him, whether he’s guilty or not,” jokes the actor. Laurence Fox had the chance to work with his uncle, Edward Fox, when filming "Intelligent Design," the third and final new Inspector Lewis story to air this year on MASTERPIECE Mystery! In this episode, Hathaway ponders his future as a police officer, while he and Lewis search for a link between the hit-and-run death of an elderly university don and the murder of one of his students.

“We’ve had most of the Fox family in the series by now, and I keep saying that it’s a pension fund for them,” jokes Whately. “Again, it’s fascinating to watch them at work because they’re all different. Edward is very different from James [Laurence’s father], as he is from Laurence. They hadn’t seen an awful lot of each other for a while, so I think Laurence was quite nervous about having his Uncle Edward come on the show, but the two of them actually got on like a house on fire. “We went out for meals in the evening in Oxford when Edward was up there, and I enjoyed watching them get to know one another all over again. The two of them clicked straight away. They have quite a few similar ideas about the business, and because he’s been a movie star for so long, it was great seeing how Edward puts a character together in his performance.” Besides his work on Inspector Lewis, TV audiences on this side of the pond can see Whately’s guest-starring role in "Gently in the Cathedral," an episode of another popular British TV detective series Inspector George Gently, which stars Martin Shaw and is currently airing Stateside on PBS.

“Martin Shaw and I had met once before 30 years ago at an Actors Equity union meeting, and, again, it was fascinating to watch how he runs his show and how it’s made,” says the actor. “It’s done by the BBC and shot in the Northeast, so from that point of view it was quite sentimental to me. The episode I did ends in a huge sort of Wild West shootout in Durham Cathedral, and I hadn’t been there since I was a 13 year old and singing in the choir. “So that was a joy, as was getting to play a baddie. I couldn’t resist doing it because my character is a baddie who you have to believe in for quite a long time. It wasn’t a huge part either, so there weren’t very many scenes to kind of establish him, and I enjoyed that acting challenge.” Given the changes in how modern-day audiences watch TV, the chance of creating a hit show is harder than ever, and the same is true of playing a character for an extended period of time. Whately knows this all too well, and in the many years he has walked in Robbie Lewis’ shoes, the actor has never once taken any of those steps for granted.

“This character has dominated nearly half my life now,” he muses. “It’s a large chunk of my acting life and really consolidated my career. I learnt almost everything that I know from doing Morse. I’ve traveled the globe and have fans all over the world from Morse and Lewis. So I have many, many happy memories and feel incredibly fortunate to have the connection to both shows as well as the Lewis role.” Please note, all Inspector Lewis photos copyright of ITV Studios for Masterpiece. Share this story Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox on the new series of Lewis - Telegraph TV and Radio Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox on the new series of Lewis Despite his initial cynicism Kevin Whately has found Inspector Morse spin-off Lewis to be a surprising hit. He and co-star Laurence Fox talk about the secret to its success. Lewis: stars Laurence Fox and Kevin Whately Photo: ITV By Naomi West Comments ‘Change’ may be the buzzword of the moment in political circles, but when it comes to entertainment there can be great value in consistency, in staying more or less the same.

‘Familiarity,’ says actor Kevin Whately when asked what he considers the appeal of ITV1’s Oxford-set detective drama Lewis, in which he plays the title role. ‘People have always liked it, so they carry on watching it.’ When Lewis returns to our screens next Sunday night, Whately, 59, will have been playing the steady police detective Robbie Lewis on and off for well over two decades. He had thought that he had seen the back of Lewis when he chose to appear in a play over participating in an episode of Morse in the late 1990s. But he was to be lured back to help conclude Inspector Morse’s story, opposite the much loved John Thaw as Morse, and then once more in 2006, four years after Thaw’s death, this time as the programme’s title character. ‘I was a bit of a naysayer,’ Whately says of the time Lewis was mooted. ‘But it took off like a train so here we are back again…’ He gestures around his small beige caravan, during a break from filming. This November morning, the crew are filming in Turl Street, a narrowish thoroughfare abutted by three of Oxford University’s colleges.

Hanging around outside a coffee shop is the long-limbed, insouciant figure of Laurence Fox, 32, who plays Lewis’s side DS Hathaway. Fox is dressed in a sharp dark suit and overcoat (‘I try to steal as much of the wardrobe budget as possible,’ he says); the scene is an encounter between Hathaway and an aristocratic young woman who was a childhood crush. ‘At last, I’ve got a love interest that is not a transsexual who tries to murder me,’ laughs Fox. The crew are as fleet-footed as a 20-or-so-strong group filming a major drama could be. In the chilly street, perfumed with the smell of lunchtime bolognese from a nearby college kitchen, scores of pedestrians and cyclists pass through, untroubled by the activity. When the cameras start turning and the real students, townspeople and tourists are replaced by ‘background artists’ carefully choreographed to amble through the shot, the change is imperceptible (the only difference is that the extras are drabber than the occasionally flamboyant Oxford inhabitants).

Related Articles Kevin Whately: I don't like detective dramas 13 Jan 2013 ‘It’s quite a guerrilla thing,’ Whately says of the city filming, though in the summer months, it proves harder not to cause a stir. ‘Especially because quite a lot of tourists have come to the city because they’ve seen Oxford in the Morse or the Lewis films.’ The casting of Fox as the brainy Hathaway opposite Whately’s down-to-earth Lewis has proved key to the sustained success of the drama (it attracted more than six million viewers last series and survived ITV’s budget cuts intact). Both undemonstrative, the two barely look at one another on-screen, but an engaging rapport has emerged. ‘It’s not necessarily written [in the script]… You can’t work on it. It’s either there or not,’ says Whately of their chemistry. Off-screen, Whately seems to take the role of a tolerant, if slightly disapproving uncle to the more waggish Fox. ‘I annoy him. He forgives me,’ is how Fox defines their relationship. Both lead actors are equal in their lack of hunger for dramatic personal storylines for their characters.

Fox, the son of actor James (Performance, Thoroughly Modern Millie) and nephew of Edward (The Day of the Jackal, Edward and Mrs Simpson), is irritated by the fact that more details of Hathaway’s background are to be revealed in the forthcoming series. We already knew he used to be a trainee priest; now we’ll learn that he grew up on a country estate where his father was manager. ‘The less you know the more you care,’ he insists. Whately argues that the drama works because the focus is not principally on the fortunes of Lewis and Hathaway, but on the murder case in each episode. ‘There is always a danger with a long-running series for it to disappear up its own a---, to become all about the regulars. Like hospital dramas where it’s the main characters getting ill. Here I’m very aware Lewis is the pivotal character, but the guests do all the acting.’ This series has pulled in a fine list of guest actors including Timothy West, Rupert Graves, Alan Davies, Diana Quick and Robert Hardy. ‘Thank God for the credit crunch,’ remarks Fox.

‘We’ve got some great people.’ As for the storylines, Fox says that this is ‘the best year yet’ – they take in a violent shooting on a country estate, a Hallowe’en murder foreseen by a medium and a primary school teacher killed during a college-based quiz weekend. Fox remarks that in the past the far-fetched narratives could become ‘the elephant in the room’ during shoots. They seem to have hit an enjoyable groove making this series. Fox became an exhausted new father while the previous series was filming; this time one-year-old Winston and actress wife Billie Piper have been ‘coming to visit loads’ since filming began back in July. During breaks he has taken to fishing in the Thames where it flows past the coach park where the film unit is based. Fox even insists on conducting his publicity interviews on the riverbank, rod in one hand, liquorice roll-up in the other. ‘We’re always filming near pretty places, so I’m not going to sit in the hutch all day,’ he says, referring to his trailer. Brutal and imaginative murders aside, the world of Lewis and Hathaway is a convivial and attractive place to be, and one that looks unlikely to change any time soon.

Kevin Whately - Auf Wiedersehen Pet & The Geordies Auf Wiedersehen Pet & The Geordies Kevin Whately Kevin Whately (born 6 February 1951) is an English actor. Whately is known for his starring role as Neville Hope in the British television comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, his role as Dr Jack Kerruish in the drama series Peak Practice, and as Robert "Robbie" Lewis in the crime dramas Inspector Morse and Lewis. Career Before turning to professional acting Whately began his working life as a folk singer, and still plays guitar, performing for charity concerts ] Along with other Auf Wiedersehen, Pet stars, he makes an appearance at the biennial benefit concert Sunday for Sammy in Newcastle. Before becoming an actor, he started training as an accountant. His acting career includes several stage plays, among them an adaptation of Twelve Angry Men and film appearances in The Return of the Soldier, The English Patient, Paranoid and Purely Belter.

Whately's television appearances include episodes of Shoestring, Angels, Juliet Bravo, Strangers, Coronation Street, Shackleton, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Marple, Inspector Morse, Alas Smith and Jones, Look and Read, You Must Be The Husband, B&B, Peak Practice, Skallagrigg, The Broker's Man, Murder in Mind, 2003 Comic Relief Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Lewis, New Tricks, Who Gets the Dog?, The Children and Silent Cry (film). Whately provided one of the voices for the English language version of the 1999 claymation Children's television series Hilltop Hospital. He has also appeared in an advert for Water Aid doing a voice over. Perhaps his most memorable television appearances were as Detective Sergeant Lewis, the down-to-earth complement to the snobbishly intellectual Inspector Morse. He reprised the role in the spin-off series Lewis, in which Lewis returns to Oxford as full Inspector. With his new partner, the Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), Inspector Lewis solves murder mysteries while trying to rebuild his life after his wife's sudden death in a road accident, and to gain recognition from his sceptical new boss.

Lewis returns to ITV two years after stars called time on hit drama series - Mirror Online Cop drama Lewis is to return to ITV – just two years after stars Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox called time on the hit series. The pair feared that the show, a spin-off of Morse, might become “a bit samey” if it continued, with Fox saying he’d had enough of playing a policeman. “I need to broaden my range before I start randomly arresting people down the pub,” he declared in 2012. “Kev and I have decided we want to do other things, otherwise it all gets a bit samey.” But yesterday channel chiefs announced that a new six-part run will start shooting next month, to air later this year. And the twist is that this time around it is Fox’s character James Hathaway who has been promoted to Inspector, while Lewis (Whately) will be brought out of retirement to be his sidekick. “It’s a new dynamic for our detectives, but one they’ll have to come to terms with quickly if they are to achieve results,” producers revealed. The eighth run of the show will be made by the same team, including Morse creator Colin Dexter as consultant.

When the “final” series aired a year ago, Whately admitted it was “very difficult to let go of something as successful as that”. He added: “But it’s probably about time. We’d really quite like to finish it.” Today ITV drama boss Steve November said: “Viewers have a great deal of respect for Inspector Lewis and a huge loyalty to Kevin Whately. Together with Laurence, he has forged a formidable partnership and we’re delighted to have them back.” Executive producer Michele Buck added: “Lewis has a special place in the hearts of the ITV audience. Since we started producing the series in 2006, Lewis has achieved a reputation for thought provoking stories and we’re determined to continue to set high standards.” Since announcing the end of Lewis in 2012, both Fox and Whately have concentrated on theatre roles. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent

Question: Kevin Whately plays the title role in the television series 'Lewis', who plays his Sergeant?
Answer: LAURENCE FOX